This is S.S.Gagarin's house, that later became Moscow horse-manufacture.
And it was built by Zhilyardi. we'll see his masterpiece later.
There's a monument to Gorky in the yard.
In fact - there's the Institute of literature of his name in this house, and for many-many years
Nikitskie gate. On the corner of Merzlyakovsky ("frozen") bystreet you can see fashionable residential compund, but one hundred years old.
Nikitskie gate are not the happiest place. In 1917 severe fights with artillery took place here.
That's why only one old house survived on the square. It used to belong to Ogarevs family.
In 1909 there was a cinema in this house, it was known as "cinema of repeated projection"
My way is a little bit far from rational - at first along Tverskoy avenue, then back.
And not everything was photoed. But somehow I have decided to make a picture of "Pushkin" cafe.
But it looks a liitle bit strange at avenue full of cars.
It would look much better in some regular park.
It is obviously a french classicism after all!
It's some kind of fake(trompleuille) - try to make new house look like old one.
You can see even a little birch somewhere at one of balconies :) like on very old houses.
Monsieur Dellos knows trade.
On your way from Pushkinskaya to NIkitskie gate you can see the monument to Esenin.
It's pretty new, it was built only to 100th anniversary of poet's birth.
Before that we had only "portrait bust" somewhere very far.
Didn't our leaders loved "the kulak henchman"!
His statue was prohibited to be called a monument :))
Further along the bystreet there's a remarkable house of modern era on the left - early work (1893) of my favourite Fyodor Shekhtel'.
The house used to belong to Smirnov P.A., a manufacturer of table wine №21.
Today - it seems to me - there's a retirement fund there. Thanks - at least they've reconstructed the interiors.
And on your right - there's a antique multiply rebuilt villa, well known thru its
last proprietress, Maria Nikolaevna Ermolova, "russian Sarah Bernard", as they used to call her
100 years ago. By the way she's become the first USSR's People's artist,
and the house was left to her thanks to Lunacharsky.
Let's change over to Nikitsky avenue. Here not everything was caught in shot also.
I promise to better :)
But I couldn't have pass by the beautiful Lunins' villa.
They say it's the most beautiful Empire villa in Moscow.
It's again - Zhilyardi. He's built the main house,
and wing for daughter of the house, that itself looks like a little palace.
But literally - a year after the housewarming Lunins have sold their estate to treasury
to Assignation bank. As if they felt awkward to live in such a big house
after their neighbors were demolished by the Fire of 1812.
And at last the house of Glavsevmorput (The main branch of the Northern Sea Route).
But I suppose it would be much more logical if it would have been built in Murmansk
or in Leningrad at least...
But... bureaucrats always wanted to live closer to...
so here it is - in Moscow. By the way its left wing is rebuilt villa of the beginning of the XX.
And there's a memorial plaque on its wall, that remembers that Papanin lived here.
